The Open Book
by xheartmehorrid
Summary: Grimmlove. A scenario in which Wilhelm discovers one of Jacob's tales.


The Open Book

Grimmlove. Disclaimed.

xxxx

He found Will huddled up against the green brick fireplace in one of the more expensive Inn rooms that they'd rented for a night out on the road. Grimy, that fireplace, with a damp pit that set the embers dwindling in a miserable way, and Wilhelm, flipping through the pages of his notebook. He'd tucked it safely into the bedtable drawer before leaving his brother to his own devices, inside, to charm and drink and woo while he went out on his mid-evening walk, thinking -- and, curious for something, must have found it there in that same drawer and opted to go nosing through its contents. He scowled behind the straggles of his beard, but Will had barely noticed yet that he'd even come in, and so couldn't be bothered to see it, evident as it was.

Will's brows were furrowed intensely, proud jaw set and his fingers laying all around the page he'd turned to and seemed to be frozen on; the pads of his fingertips smoothing and shifting over the same set of words again: a sentence. He seemed troubled by them, somehow, the words; though Wilhelm hardly was ever troubled about anything out loud.

Jacob shrugged off his damp patchwork coat and laid it on the bed, wringing his fingers as he stepped up alongside his brother by the now nearly diminished flame.

"Will," He said. "My notebook?"

Nothing.

"_Will_," he persisted, growing slightly impatient.

His brother's eyes remained downcast and moving from one delicately articulated word -- scattered in Jacob's slightly scratchy, sideways hand -- to its neighbor, boyish mouth pressed and short eyelashes gold-brown flickers on his cheek, stirring now and then behind his eyelids.

"Will!"

He glanced up from the text, meeting Jacob's impatience and outstretched hand with a look of his own.

"Give it back!"

'''William and John,''' He shot out, suddenly; inquisitive, yet forceful. Thick tongue rising up against him with the heat in his eyes plunging deep.

"'The two crowned Kings of Persia. Two poor boys from French-occupied Germany who found a sack of magic beans and became loved Kings of a foreign empire.'"

Jacob's eyes flashed-- those green eyes-- eyes like broken bottle glass, and he snatched the book back to himself, holding it protectively against him. "Will, I never said that you could -- "

"'William and John became lovers and lived happily forever after in their union?'" Will burst out, angrily. "Lovers?"

"There is nothing wrong with love between men!" Jacob cried, exasperated, knowing this would have to come up sometime and having always dreaded the day it did. He felt his brother may not have been so accepting of his orientation-- but this was not the way he would have liked his brother to find out about him.

"So what's so wrong with it?", he cried out in frustration, clenching the book more tightly to himself.

". . .Is there something you're not telling me, Jake?"

Slow, tense. Will's voice, like black tar boiling in a pot.

Thick.

Pausing a moment, the high pitch of his own seemed to slowly seep out from under him, and he looked away. "What's so wrong with it?" Jacob repeated, more softly.

Almost painfully. It shook Will's heart, a little, seeing him so broken standing there, but his fingers clenched, and his teeth were hard inside his jaw.

"It's unnatural, Jacob," he said, after a minute. "It's sick."

"It's just a story, Will." Jake sighed, disheartenedly. "Only a story just like all the others. . ."

Will's fingertips smoothed over the fabric covering his thighs, thoughtfully, and he was quiet for a minute.

"They were brothers," He grated out, slowly. His eyes were lowered to the ground beneath them -- his shoes, polished leather buckle shoes -- or his knees, but he could not look into the breaking bottle-green eyes of his brother, who wrote stories about brothers who were poor and loved each other, who found magic beans that made them Kings of a foreign country and not the bearers of a dead little girl's memory; the little sister who could not be brought back to life through any story no matter how magical the beans or how fantastic the tale. His brother who, maybe, was keeping secrets from him now, ones that he didn't want to realize because they were so large and deep and so hard to understand and meant everything and nothing all at once -- when there had never been secrets between them before. Buried between them.

But maybe that's what they were. Buried. Maybe he really just couldn't handle it anymore if he had dug them up on accident; if he had dug them up on purpose.

"Brothers," he repeated, snapping-- maybe too harshly, seeing the way his brother recoiled.

Jacob seemed to flinch on the inside.

"It's just a story, Will," he said, again, and made his voice quiet as he hugged the book loosely against his chest. "And in my story, they just love each other."

Their eyes collided then and it almost broke his heart, how sharp they hit each other. How deep that collision dove and cracked the earth inside of them.

"_That's it._ Nothing else. Okay?"

Will stood. He moved forward, face-to-face with his older brother, and the light moved across both of their faces from the fire. Jacob instinctively backed away from him.

"In your story, John tells William that he will never lie to him. That he will always love him. But William is the greedy brother, isn't he? The selfish one? The actor? Isn't he? So why. Why does this _John_ love him at all? Because he must? Because they're _brothers_?" He leaned forward, veins in his neck hard pumping through his jaw and eyes like the brick hedges on the fireplace, damp and unmoving and covered all over with the moss of decayed stonework.

"_Why_?" He demanded again, and water came to Jacob's eyes-- threatening to spill over in large amounts.

"Because they're soul mates," he whispered, looking so terribly sad that inside his chest Will's heart leapt out for Jacob, kicking against his ribs to free itself, to find his brother's heart and comfort it; to be caught in his rough quill-stained hands like a big slippery fish. And to wipe the unshed tears away, as he had done so many times before.

He felt that pang of grief, that sadness in his brother's eyes blossoming inside his stomach, and Jacob said, so softly:

"Jacob is William's soul mate."

And before he even had time to realize his mistake, Will had closed the distance between them, palms pressed against his brother's face, and crushed their lips together.

Jacob had caught his heart in his hands and stained them with the deep, dark ink of what never should be.

* * *

/finite. 


End file.
